Photovoice is a method in which participants use photography to identify, express, and disseminate their experiences. We conducted photovoice projects with women living with HIV/AIDS (N=21) to explore opportunities and challenges associated with the method. Photovoice provided a means to achieve two key principles of ethical public health practice: It gives participants opportunities to define their health priorities, and facilitates participant empowerment. Ethical challenges that were encountered related to exposing, through photographs, one's identity as living with HIV/AIDS, illicit activities, and other people. We discuss lessons learned for future practice to maximize the ethical opportunities and manage the challenges associated with using photovoice as an HIV-related CBPR strategy.
Receiving a telephone call about breast cancer diagnosis may be the norm rather than the exception in health care today. Trends in practice, as well as current best practices based primarily on expert opinion, may not provide optimal care for women diagnosed with breast cancer. Patient outcome research to guide future practice, such as the impact of modes of delivery of bad news, is urgently needed to determine appropriate patient-centered approaches for notification of breast cancer diagnoses.
There is growing implementation of storytelling as a specific application of narrative in public health. As the field’s latest epoch evolves to consider cultural determinants, reimagination of how scientists conceptualize, operationalize, and capture populations’ unique elements is necessary, and storytelling provides a genuine and efficacious methodology that can assist with that reimagination. Professionals are creating more spaces that demonstrate how storytelling elucidates, promotes, and supports contextual factors that are not captured by orthodox methodologies. However, more opportunities are needed to exhibit storytelling’s impact on capturing the nuances in human experiences, such as those of historically and systemically underrepresented populations. This study synthesizes the past decade of research in public health and related fields that primarily utilized storytelling and reports significant implications. Additionally, this study highlights explorations in public health that primarily use storytelling as a research and practice approach. Each case study includes a description of the background and aims, elaborates on storytelling’s utilization, and discusses findings, observations, and future directions. Finally, this study discusses conceptual issues in public health raised by use of storytelling, such as how to best capture impact on human beings and the importance of context. This article’s goal is to present current evidence of critical reevaluations to the epistemological, conceptual, and practical paradigms within public health through storytelling. Additionally, this article aims to provide support and empowerment to public health scientists considering creative approaches to better acknowledge and appreciate humanity’s inherent subjectivity.
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